It's
interesting to speculate on how much of Dealey Plaza would have survived if not for the assassination. The old Art-Deco Bryon Colonnade might have been deemed an eyesore and replaced with a strip mall. The Depository would have been just another worthless and antiquated warehouse, long-ago demolished in favor of a parking lot.

The saviour of Dealey Plaza wasn't a committee of cultural elitists and architectural experts. No politicans or businessmen saw potential in such a cause. Even the saviour didn't have preservation on his mind when he approached the Depository early on the morning of November 22, 1963. Destruction and mayhem were his goals.

Oswald had no Motive?

Over the years, critics have made much of the Warren Commission's "failure" to assign a specific motive to Lee Harvey Oswald. However, the Commission acknowledged it "has functioned neither as a court presiding over an adversary proceeding nor as a prosecutor determined to prove a case, but as a factfinding agency committed to the ascertainment of the truth." The Commission differentiated itself from a court with a prosecutor advancing a motive for the accused. Suggesting a singular motive would have meant speculation, which was not in the Commission's mandate of strict factfinding.

A review of Oswald's background and writings comprise Chapter VII of The Warren Report called "Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives." The Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 noted the conclusions of this chapter, adding: "Politics was the dominant force in his life right down to the last days when upon being arrested for the assassination, he requested to be represented by a lawyer prominent for representing Communists."

Socialist to Revolutionary

Oswald was a self-proclaimed Marxist since adolescence who defected to the USSR in 1959 on his own initiative, offering to trade on his military experience with the Marines. Oswald's ideal of a Soviet utopia was immediately soured by bureaucratic indifference, causing Oswald to adopt revolutionary Marxism as opposed to institutionalized Leninism, perhaps inspired by some Cuban students he befriended while living in Minsk. By the time Oswald and his Russian-born wife Marina leave the USSR in June 1962, Oswald sees in the Castro revolution a truer form of socialism  one not corrupted by Soviet Communist Party Officials and their perks.

Ironically, Oswald, as he planned the assassination of Dallasite General Walker  an outspoken critic of Castro  might have been expecting the act would ensure for him a prominent position in Havana, where he planned to eventually defect. The nighttime attempt on Walker on April 10, 1963 failed when Oswald's bullet was deflected by a window frame.

That summer, while living in New Orleans, Oswald was very active in defending Castro through leafletting and debating on radio. Oswald apparently tried to infiltrate some anti-Castro elements, perhaps to gather intelligence to impress Havana. All this effort turned out to be for nothing when Oswald was rejected at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City in early October  a dejected Oswald wrote the Soviet embassy in Washington about the episode in a letter mailed November 12.

Oswald may have read David Harker's September 1963 interview with Castro that appeared in major US newspapers, quoting Castro as saying: "United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe."

Jean Davison, in the 1983 book Oswald's Game, suggests Oswald could have read in The Militant  the Socialist Workers' newspaper which he subscribed to  of Castro's suspicions of US  sponsored assassination attempts against him by the US, and acted in retaliation. Oswald would show Castro what a great revolutionary he missed out on.

Oswald Liked Kennedy?

Critics assert Oswald apparently "liked" President Kennedy, so why would he kill him? But place yourself into the mindset of a Marxist revolutionary; in 1918, there were many among the butchers of the Romanov family who "liked" them as people. Oswald cast aside any admiration for JFK as a person, seeing assassination as an opportunity to advance a greater cause.

To Oswald, Kennedy was probably seen as a privileged politician who refused to condemn McCarthyism during the 1960 election, had dragged his feet on civil rights, humiliated Castro in the Missile Crisis, permitted far-right and anti-Castro extremism (as personified by General Walker) to increase, ordered the largest buildup of US Armed Forces in peacetime history, called for a 1,000 ICBMs, etc. This was before the canonization of Kennedy that followed his death  by the fall of 1963, JFK was receiving a lot of criticism from both the right and left.

The Patsy

The JFK movie presented Oswald as a "fall guy." But how does a "patsy" improve his predicament by murdering a police officer, then attempting to murder the arresting officers? A genuine patsy would be anxious to turn himself into the police; betraying whoever he thought set him up would presumably work in his favor.

Instead of co-operating, Lee Oswald retrieves the revolver at his rooming house, eludes police as much as possible, then resorts to homicide when his path crosses that of authorities. In the pages of The Militant, all police were painted as thugs  Oswald didn't think he would survive arrest.

Critics conveniently fail to disclose the full context in which Oswald announced he was a "patsy" as he passed reporters in the halls of the Dallas Police Department:

"They're taking me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm only a patsy."

Now, you might ask: What does Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union have to do with the reasons for his arrest at the Texas Theatre? Not a thing. Oswald was already posturing for the political trial he envisioned, becoming the typical political prisoner: victim of police brutality, denied an attorney, and railroaded for being a Marxist.

As soon as Oswald found a like-minded attorney, he would teach the world a thing or two about revolutionary Marxism. Oswald tried unsuccessfully that weekend to contact John Abt, a New York lawyer commended in The Militant for his work with the US Communist Party; Abt happened to be out-of-town at an isolated cottage in Connecticut.

Showdown in Dallas

Suspecting persecution of leftists by officials, Oswald was dismayed at the visits to his estranged wife Marina  then staying with a friend of hers in Irving  from Dallas FBI Agent James Hosty, who was trying to update Oswald's file, sent from the New Orleans office, by determining his place of residence and work. Oswald was under routine surveillance following his pro-Castro work in New Orleans and mysterious contacts with Communist officials in Mexico City.

In the letter to the Soviet embassy mailed November 12, Oswald complained of harassment "tactics by the notorious FBI." That same day, Oswald delivered a note to the Dallas FBI office, warning Hosty to stop bothering his wife.

On Monday, November 18, President Kennedy campaigning in Miami delivered his last major address, criticizing Castro's betrayal of the democratic seeds of the Cuban revolution. The headline in the Dallas Times Herald the next day proclaimed "Kennedy Virtually Invites Cuban Coup."

As chance would have it, the President would be making an early campaign swing through Texas that very month. Circumstances such as Kennedy passing beneath windows Oswald knew were usually deserted at lunchtime and access to a familiar weapon would have seemed fortuitous.

Curtain Rods and a Ring

On Thursday, November 21st, Oswald, catching a ride with co-worker Wesley Frazier, unexpectedly visited his wife overnight at Ruth Paine's house in Irving. Marina knew the rifle was stored in Paine's garage but never suspected that as the reason for the visit. The next morning, Oswald left behind  in an old wallet kept at the Paine house  nearly all his savings: $170. Nearby remained his wedding ring.

Oswald was observed placing a wrapped package on the backseat of Frazier's car for the trip to work. Frazier also suspected nothing, accepting Oswald's explanation about bringing back "curtain rods," something he failed to mention to Marina and Mrs. Paine the night before, and would later deny to police.

After parking at the company lot two blocks north of the Depository, Frazier saw Oswald take the long, bulky package into the building. The sixth floor was in upheaval; workers were preparing to re-enforce the floor surface with plywood, and had opened up floor space by shifting boxes from along the west wall towards the east wall. Oswald had ready access and some privacy to build the Sniper's Nest and possibly assemble the rifle at intervals through the morning.

The Wild Miss

Why didn't Oswald fire at the President as the motorcade approached the Depository while on Houston Street? The most obvious reason is that Oswald would have been immediately exposed to return fire from the Secret Service back-up car behind the Presidential limousine.

Perhaps it occurred to Oswald  whom we're told supposedly "liked" the President  how difficult it would be to shoot another human being whose face is visible, as compared to shooting in the back the "symbol" of US officialdom he so despised. Later, it was obvious the arrangement of boxes in the Sniper's Nest best accommodated firing down Elm Street, indicating Oswald had discarded any plans to shoot the President on Houston.

In 1979, the Select Committee's Photographic Panel observed:

"The first reaction by any of the limousine occupants to a severe external stimulus begins to occur in the vicinity of Zapruder frames 162-167. At this time, Connally is looking to his left, when his head begins a rapid, sudden motion to the right. In quantitative terms, he turns his head approximately 60° to his right in one-ninth of a second."

This would be consistent with the Governor's testimony that he was looking left when he heard a gunshot that caused him to turn right. Being familiar with firearms, Connally said he knew immediately the first loud report was from a rifle.

Connally's head turn  along with the slowing down and turning towards the Depository of a young girl running alongside the motorcade named Rosemary Willis  indicate a missed first shot by Oswald around Z160. The bullet likely disintegrated off the pavement, sending a lead fragment to the Underpass to nick James Tague.

One of the true mysteries of the Kennedy assassination  why did Oswald miss?  can never be resolved. Perhaps the trigger was accidentally nudged as Oswald was bringing the Mannlicher-Carcano to bear on the limousine, or Oswald hurried a shot as he saw the oak branches approaching in the scope, or the branches caused a deflection. Each succeeding shot demonstrated an increasing familiarity  and accuracy  with the weapon.

The Double Hit

With plenty of time to recycle the bolt on his Mannlicher-Carcano and reacquire the target, Oswald's second shot came three-and-one-half seconds after the first. The limousine was now clear of the oak's branches and perhaps the non-reaction of the Secret Service agents (though a few had jerked their heads to their right immediately after frame 160) renewed Oswald's confidence.

The metal-jacketed bullet struck just six inches below the assumed target: JFK's skull. By errie coincidence, it had passed through the soft tissue of JFK's neck without directly striking a bone, leaving the bullet 100-percent intact and undistorted. The distance through the neck was just 14 cm, too short to cause the bullet to seriously tumble, so it emerged from the throat leaving a clean circular wound many mistook for an "entrance" wound.

By the time the bullet reached Connally, its tumbling caused a slightly elongated entrance wound. As with Kennedy's throat, the bullet coursing along Connally's right chest muscles did not directly strike a bone; rather pressure from the missile caused the fifth rib to implode into the right lung.

The bullet, now considerably slowed, first suffered distortion (an elongated twist) when it glanced off the right radius bone. Connally's right wrist would heal without pins or an artifical joint because the deflected bullet had taken no bone with it. The nearly-spent bullet then nestled into the left thigh where it apparently stayed until Connally was lifted from his stretcher onto the operating table at Parkland.

Death in Dealey

Fortuitous for Oswald, left-to-right tracking steadily decreased as the car approached Elm's curved midway. The third shot came five seconds after the second. A greatly diminished trajectory slope caused the target to recede much slower in Oswald's telescopic view, thus easing vertical tracking.

Any inhibitions towards taking life now dissolved, the assassin's last shot became the easiest. It would later be determined that Oswald had caught the President's upper right skull by just an inch. If the bullet had struck the intended target, the center of the rear skull, it would have likely exited out through the President's face.

Oswald's only conspirator that day was Lady Luck, who had grown weary of Kennedy's recklessness. All the advances in the case  access to the autopsy photographs, release of files, scientific and investigative improvements  have upheld Oswald as the lone assassin. The Select Committee trajectory analysis that confirmed the Single-Bullet Theory has been bolstered by recent advances in computer modeling.

The precise instant of the double-hit has now been pinpointed on the Zapruder film. The physical and medical evidence has always pointed to injuries caused by two bullets, in turn ballistically matched to Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano, whose trigger-housing displayed his fingerprints.

Recent books by lawyer Gerald Posner, archivist Richard Trask, and Gary Savage reveal the extremes by which some critics encourage and then embellish foggy memories, hearsay, and minor discrepancies in the record.

It comes as news to the pathologists at Bethesda Naval Hospital (where Kennedy was autopsied), several medical panel reviews, and the Parkland doctors who visited the National Archives in 1988, or were interviewed by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1992, that the autopsy photographs are forgeries that conceal a rear exit wound, as charged by the leading critics since the photos went public.

Crime of the Century

Dedication and passion in seeking the truth about the Kennedy assassination is commendable, but sadly becomes misdirected when critics do so much to deny other researchers and the public a genuine appreciation of the lone-assassin evidence. Little wonder there's so much malaise in America following 1963: Millions earnestly believe they were deprived of a reform-minded President by oppressive forces still in charge.

If Lee Harvey Oswald's goal was to shock American society, the conspiracy theorists have served his cause well in maximizing the misery Oswald wrought Their view that politicians and agencies are totally corrupt fulfills the Oswald agenda.

Why the continued fascination with President Kennedy's assassination?

Some have called it the most historic singular event of the 20th century. Others are drawn to the tragedy of a young leader full of promise cut down in his prime. The assassination is also a human drama that touched countless lives. Through the witnesses and principals, we can measure what we hope would have been our own responses to such a devastating event.

Politics, drama, heroism on a grand and local scale. All compelling reasons in themselves to study the assassination. Even without a conspiracy, it's the most fascinating chapter of the last century. Still plenty of reason to brave the traffic in Dealey Plaza.